Some different interpretations of London

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford

Samuel Johnson

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idler of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

                          Arthur Boyd Houghton London Scene 1836-1875 (At the Tate Modern)

You are now In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow

At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore

Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.

Yet in its depth what treasures!

Shelley

Claude-Oscar Monet The Thames below Westminster c1871 (Can be seen at the National Gallery)

When it’s three o’clock in New York, it’s still 1938 in London.

Bette Midler

I’m leaving because the weather is too good. I hate London when it’s not raining.

Groucho Marx